Gajevi near Orašje cleared of mines: Bridge construction can begin

At the Gajevi location in the Orašje municipality, 22,085.00 square meters were manually inspected, 11,750 square meters were mechanically prepared, and 6,354 of the total 33,835.00 m² of suspicious area were cleared, and one piece of UXO (artillery projectile) was found, reports the Patria news agency.

The task involved the demining team FUCZ "Orašje B" with eight deminers, a machine team for mechanical soil preparation with an MV-4 machine and two operators, and a PLANT team with an armored loader that worked for two days and removed waste material around destroyed houses and auxiliary buildings.

The task was made more difficult and prolonged by adverse weather conditions when the floodwaters from the Sava River overflowed the Lateral Canal, causing the worksite to be closed for a time, requiring four pumps to be deployed for water drainage.

The cleared location has been handed over to the local authorities so they can build a bridge connecting the settlements of Draganovci-Gajevi-Vidovice, and with the cleared canal, the water community in Orašje will also carry out drainage of rainwater into the Sava River.

Previously, FUCZ demining teams at the same location in the Gajevi settlement, between 2012 and 2015, cleared the entire village (15 houses with 26 auxiliary buildings), after which conditions were created for the return of pre-war residents (displaced from 1992 to 1995) to the settlements of Draganovci and Gajevi, to plots and fields that were immediately plowed and sown. In both tasks, 206,762.00 m² of suspicious area was inspected.